[MCR] Mt Hector - Canadian Rockies

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Two guests and I made an attempt on Mount Hector this past weekend. We
followed an old skin track up to the first steep slopes of the tour, past
old wet-loose avalanche debris and up a boot pack trail to the lower-angle
terrain above. 1-2cm of new snow gave the appearance of adequate coverage
but was only just enough to cover shallow rocks. We had to hike up a steeper
moraine due to lack of snow. We roped up on Hector Glacier but turned back
at ~3100m/10,000' due to very low visibility, and the increased potential
for crevasse fall, as well as concerns of instability as we contoured around
the right side of the glacier towards the summit. We'd had a couple of minor
whumpfs on our ascent and digging at our high point revealed moderate (14
taps on a compression test) and sudden planar failures ~40cm down
(presumably the Feb. 10th layer). Snow depth on the glacier itself seemed
less than adequate for low-visibility travel and varied widely from 40cm to
200cm, presumably due to wind distribution. We saw many open crevasses
through the snow and cloud.

 

The actual skiing on the glacier itself was decent despite being inside a
ping-pong ball. However, upon reaching the moraines the quality of skiing
rapidly diminished due to either very hard windslab or little-to-no-snow. We
side-stepped and picked our way through the shallow spots and triggered a
very large whumpf in the lee of a large, steep moraine ~2800m. Skiing was
tougher down low on 3-5cm thick melt-freeze crust on south-to-west aspects;
our skis suffered with lots of scratches and a core shot for me. In my
opinion, this area will need quite a bit more snow in order to offer good
skiing and easier travel.

 

Morning temps at the car were -26C and warmed up to -14C by 1100hrs but
dropped back to -18C by 1600hrs. Cloud cover increased throughout the day as
did the precipitation although only ~1cm accumulated. Winds were calm below
2800m and were light from the west at 3100m. 

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif

Andrew Councell

Mountain Guide

 

via

Peter Tucker
Executive Director
B: +1.403.949.3587
M: +1.403.689.4324
ed at acmg.ca  |  www.acmg.ca


 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20140305/7824dc87/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 43 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20140305/7824dc87/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 3662 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20140305/7824dc87/attachment-0003.gif>